Bruce McPherson

How to Say Yes to God: Homily for the Feast of the Annunciation

By Father Phillip LeMasters

Today we celebrate the very best example of how to live faithfully as a human being before God with the feast of the Annunciation. When the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was to become the Theotokos, she freely accepted this extraordinary calling when she said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” When she offered herself to become the Living Temple of God, she played a crucial role in how the Savior would “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” In opening her life without reservation to Christ, she made it possible for Him to “share in flesh and blood” and participate in our humanity so “that through death He might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil.”

By conventional human standards, this teenage girl had no power or prominence at all. No one in first-century Palestine would have been inclined to look to her as having a role in delivering them from anything. But through her courage in accepting a calling that would impact every dimension of her life in ways that she could not possibly have fully understood, the Theotokos became a fierce warrior against evil because she broke the cycle of disobedience that went back to the rebellion of our first parents. They chose satisfying their own self-centered desires over obeying the Lord and becoming more like Him in holiness. She chose, instead, to say “yes” without reservation to the point of sharing her own flesh and blood with the Son of God, and of loving and serving Him throughout His earthly life, even as He hung on the Cross. She is the New Eve through whom the Second Adam became one of us for our salvation.

In order for the Savior to be fully divine and fully human, He had to be born of a woman. In order for Him to be the Great High Priest Who offered Himself fully on the Cross to conquer the power of death, the Messiah “had to be made like His brethren in every respect.” The Theotokos’ offering of herself in free obedience made it possible for Him to do that. Here we encounter the great mystery of divine-human cooperation or synergy, for God always respects our freedom as unique persons in responding to His will. God did not choose the Virgin Mary randomly, but prepared for her across the generations of the Hebrew people, culminating in the aged, barren couple of Joachim and Anna. Like Abraham and Sarah before them, they did not conceive simply by their own youthful physical abilities, but after painful decades of childlessness due to the miraculous blessing of the Lord. John the Baptist was born to Zechariah and Elizabeth in the same way.

These elderly parents of newborns bear witness that something very different from birth into a world dominated by the fear of death has arrived. Now a new age of the fulfillment of God’s promises has dawned. It is fulfilled through a young girl’s amazing obedience, as the Savior becomes an unborn Child in her womb. She conceived and gave birth without passion, without a husband, and in a way that preserved her virginity. In the Theotokos’ astounding offering of herself to the Lord, the brokenness and corruption of our humanity is unwound and undone. This New Eve does not choose the satisfaction of her own desires over obedience to God, but opens every dimension of her being to share in His life. Through her, the New Adam is born Who heals all the corruption of the first.

Remember, however, that neither our Savior nor the Theotokos is a conventional hero. Instead of destroying His enemies through brute force, the Lord submitted to the ultimate humiliation of crucifixion, death, burial in a tomb, and descent to Hades in order to deliver us from captivity to fear of the grave and to bring us into the joy of eternal life. He does not inflict suffering upon others, but takes it upon Himself purely for our sake. The Theotokos was a young virgin, unmarried and of no particular importance in her society. Her unwed pregnancy was scandalous and certainly not a path to a conventional life. Eventually, she saw her Son and God condemned as a blasphemer and a traitor, and then nailed to the Cross. Her purity and blessedness were surely hidden from the world and known only to those who had the eyes to see her Son as the Savior, not in spite of His Passion, but because of it.

We must use the spiritual disciplines of Lent to become more like the Theotokos in her complete obedience and receptivity to the Lord. The Archangel announced her unique calling to which she said “yes.” Through her, the Son of God united Himself with humanity. Our calling, then, is to become like her in hearing and responding to God’s calling as we unite ourselves personally with Him.

If we believe the good news of this feast, then we may shut off no part of our lives from communion with Christ in holiness. His becoming the God-Man calls us to follow the example of the Theotokos in receiving Him in a fashion that transforms every dimension of our life into a sign of His salvation. That is a tall order that we probably cannot image we would ever fulfill. We likely cannot even begin to understand how that could be possible for people like us who are gravely weakened by our sins and the slaves of our self-centered desires.

By this point in Lent, we may have a clearer sense of how hard it is to open our lives to Christ through prayer, fasting, generosity, forgiveness, and repentance. We undertake these practices so poorly and feebly, often gaining a stronger sense of our weakness than of peace, blessedness, and joy. If we have embraced the season with integrity so far, Lent will have opened our eyes a bit to the true state of our souls; and if we are honest, there is much there that we do not like to see. Though that may seem like bad news, it is actually exactly what we need. For if we are to grow in personal union with the Lord, we have to get over any self-righteous illusions that would drown out the message we need to hear. If we are to learn to say “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” we must do so as the particular people we truly are. If we try to relate to God with some kind of imaginary holiness or religiosity, we will do more harm than good to our souls. We may be able to fool ourselves, but we can never fool God.

Through the Theotokos’s response to the message of the Archangel, the Savior became one of us, uniting divinity and humanity in His own Person. By His grace, He calls and enables each of us to find the healing of our souls by sharing in His blessed life. As the Lenten journey continues with all its struggles, we have the opportunity to gain the spiritual strength to receive Him more fully as we grow into the unique persons He created us to be in His image and likeness. Let us look to the Theotokos as our hero, our great example, of what happens when a humble, obedient person says “yes” to God from the depths of her soul. There is no way other than becoming more like her to open ourselves to the victory over the fear of death that her Son accomplished through His Cross and glorious resurrection on the third day.

Surrender Ourselves To God’s Grace – Archimandrite Aimilianos

In our class Sunday we discussed distractions and how difficult it can be to remain focused during these longer, more intense services we experience during Lent. I thought this article was full of wisdom and pragmatic guidance that might be useful to us as we approach the mid-point of the Fast which occurs next Wednesday. The focus of the article is on the Divine Liturgy. It’s an excerpt from the outstanding book ’The Way of the Spirit’ by Archimandrite Aimilianos. It’s a useful next step as we get in touch with our sense of exile that he described in this earlier article . It’s also a good followup to the article we read about ’finding our true selves in Christ’.

Chapter 2 – On The State That Jesus Confers

My beloved children, how marvelous was today’s Gospel lesson! It’s one we’ve heard many times and experience continuously, especially during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. As we journey through the desert of life, it is only natural that our thirst should draw us to the Liturgy, because the Divine Liturgy is a sumptuous table set in the open air, such as that which the Lord has spread before us today.

What did we hear in the Gospel? Jesus gathered the people together. Why? Because the Apostles told Him they have nothing to eat (cf. Mk 6.36; Mt 14.15). Thousands of people, who had come from every town to see Jesus (Mk 6.33), would have gone hungry, and so the Lord had them sit down in groups on the ground (Mk 6.40), in order to satisfy their souls. They had gone forth into the wilderness to see Jesus, and He gathered them all together (cf. Mk 6.35; Mt 14.15).

The Divine Liturgy, my beloved, is precisely this going forth; it is a movement from one place to another, which we enact continuously. It is also a sitting down in the open in order to eat. It is, first of all, a kind of exodus. But from where? The people mentioned in the Gospel went forth from their towns and villages (Mk 6.33; Mt 14.13), but we come forth from ourselves, as well as from the places in which we live. We leave one kind of place, and come to another, which is different from the one we left. And who among us, upon entering a church, does not sense that there is something special here? Who does not know that to come here means to leave all else behind? And this can be seen by the fact that, if an inappropriate thought enters our mind while we’re here, we immediately want to dismiss it. And even if we’re unable to, we recognize it as something foreign, something that has intruded into the space of our soul, something that has slipped past our guard and entered into us.

We enter the church, then, when we go forth from ourselves in power, in substance, and in truth, leaving behind all our sins, our inclinations, and our aspirations. To enter the church means to leave outside all those things that make up our life in the world. That which exists is God (cf. Ex 3.14), but that which is ours, and which alone belongs to us, is our sin, our self will, and our desire. Apart from God, the self is something non-existent, even though it is, and remains, the creation of His hands, the breath of His first blessing (cf. Gen 2.7).

When we enter the church, we leave behind, not simply the things we see, but even the things for which we hope, because the latter in particular occupy a central place in our lives. Even though the things we hope for are not currently in our hands, we live as if they already were, feeling them intensely, as if we could run our fingers through them, lay hold of them, and possess them. In general, the intensity of our feelings about such things assumes the character of an actual experience, and we must leave that behind, along with all that we see. 2

And what we “see” is everything we encounter in the course of the day: things seen by the eyes of the body as well as those of the soul—which are much more perceptive. The things we “see” are all the things we experience, which stir us up, unsettle us, occupy our minds, give us pleasure, and lift our spirits. When our eyes fall upon them, they elevate us, but only to a place within the visible world: never beyond it.

In leaving behind everything we see, we come forth from that which constitutes our place of exile. This is the new exodus undertaken by the children of God every time they assemble and unite themselves to Christ in the sacred space of the church.

Having left everything behind, where do we find ourselves? In the open air, as befits people close to God (Wis 16.9; cf. Lk 21.31). 3

Why do I say in the open air? Because, looking around the church, we feel that we’re standing in heaven, and heaven cannot be considered a closed space. 4 And this is why Christ chose the desert as a place for prayer: precisely because its endless expanses and tremendous openness symbolize heaven itself. The desert, moreover, stands in contrast to the world: it contains no worldly pleasure, it gives you no earthly delight, and it offers you no fleshly repose. Heaven is something like that.

It follows, then, that no one can live in the desert if he’s still seeking to satisfy his own desires, if he is still anxious to realize his own hopes. You ask God to satisfy your desires, and, when He doesn’t, you think He’s turning a deaf ear. You ask God to realize your hopes, and to your dismay they remain elusive. You ask God to deepen your religious feelings, only to discover that He keeps Himself at a distance. Why? Because in reality those things are only about you, and not God, and thus they constitute the closed space in which you are confined; they are the place out of which God wants to lead you. Now, however, we find ourselves in the open air like that crowd of thousands, people close to God, close to the Lord. As for me, I’m blind, but I’m here too. I’m paralyzed, but nevertheless I’m here. I have no wings, I’m confined to the earth, but I’m here too, close to God.

What does it mean to be close to God? Think for a moment: can you be close to an icon and not be moved to venerate it? Can you be close to a fire and not be warmed? Can you be close to the light and not be illumined? Of course not. How, then, can you be close to God and not become godlike? How can you stretch out on God’s open spaces and not be raised up to the heights of His grandeur?

It follows, then, that after our exit from the world, we find ourselves close to God. We do not, however, find ourselves before the face of God (cf. Ex 33.11). Why? Because, for the most part, the eyes of our soul and body (which are both earthly) do not see God: they only seek Him. In the darkness broken by the brazen lamps, we seek Him, but we do not see Him. And that is the tragedy of human existence: we see everything except that which truly exists. All creation, which had a beginning and which will come to an end, falls under our gaze, which means we see things that, in reality, have no independent existence. 5 The tragic figure of man does not see that which alone truly exists: the One Who Is (cf. Ex 3.14), and Who is always with us.

That is what it means to be close to God. And when we enter into the open spaces of the church, we immediately experience a particular feeling, a feeling which confirms for us that here, in this place, our Helper is at hand. He is invisible, but you feel Him, as if He were rushing toward you, as if you could hear the sound of His breathing. He is your Helper, the One Who can deliver you, Who can redeem you, Who alone can satisfy your insatiable soul, which is forever being gnawed by hunger. You are close to God, and God is invisibly present. But, you may ask, where is He? Who can see Him?

If you wish to see God, my beloved children, there’s only one thing to do: go to church filled with longing to see His face, filled with divine and heavenly desire to be able, somehow, to feel the presence of your Helper and Defender. When you do this, your soul will experience an initially strange feeling: it is God touching your heart. And what will the heart do in response? Will it laugh and rejoice? No. It will be filled with a blessed, godly grief, and begin to weep and lament. In the presence of the Lord, you’ll feel your heart—which is like a useless sack—filling to the brim with the sense of its own emptiness and thereby overflowing with tears. And these tears will be its secret cry, saying:

“Where are You, Lord? Have mercy on me.” “Where are You, Lord?” That is the heart’s first cry. But it immediately realizes that it’s not able to see God, and that, if it did, it would lose its life (cf. Ex 33.20). Correcting its mistake, it continues: “Grant me Your mercy, You are my mercy, Yours is mercy, I am Yours, and You alone can have mercy upon me; You alone can bring me up from the pit of tribulation, from the depths of Your absence and my absence—Your absence from me, and mine from Your own spiritual life.”

When the soul begins to cry—and it cries to God, my beloved, very easily indeed, because God, in a sense, is the soul’s only surviving relative, and what could be more natural than that it should seek Him, and that it should cry when it realizes that it cannot see Him? When you allow your soul to cry, when you reject everything that cuts off the flow of your tears, then you’ll have a feeling of much greater intimacy with God. You’ll understand that now someone else governs your life. You’ll sense that now someone else has grasped the tiller, someone else has taken hold of the wheel (indeed of your own hands) and is now directly guiding you Himself. You become someone guided by the grace of God.

We are guided by God’s grace, to which you can surrender yourself in all confidence. Indeed, it is impossible for you to do the slightest thing without it. Consider the glory of the stars, the magnificence of the heavens, and the wonders of the earth: none of these can give you anything at all. The only thing that can fashion a new heart within you (cf. Ezek 11.19), rendering the old one utterly useless, is the power of God’s grace.

The Annunciation & Our Conciliar Salvation

By Father Stephen Freeman

I consider it both a strange mystery and a settled matter of the faith that God prefers not to do things alone. Repeatedly, He acts in a manner that involves the actions of others when, it would seem, He could have acted alone.

Why would God reveal His Word to the world through the agency of men? Why would He bother to use writing? Why not simply communicate directly with people? Why speak to Moses in a burning bush? Why did the Incarnation involve Mary? Could He not have simply become man, whole, complete, adult, in a single moment?

Such questions could be multiplied ad infinitum. But at every turn, what we know of God involves others as well. We may rightly conclude that such a means of acting pleases Him.

This Friday is the Feast of the Annunciation when the Church celebrates the Incarnation of Christ at word of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. An Orthodox hymn on the feast says:

The manner of His emptying cannot be known;
the manner of His conception is beyond speech.
An Angel ministers at the miracle; a virginal womb receives the Son;
the Holy Spirit is sent down; the Father on high is well pleased,
and according to their common counsel, a reconciliation is brought to pass
in which and through which we are saved.

“According to their common counsel” is a rich phrase describing this conciliar action of God.

At the same time that this conciliar mode of action seems obvious to Orthodoxy, it is frequently denied or diminished by others. There is a fear in some Christian quarters that were we to admit that God shared His action with any other, our salvation would be a matter of our own works and not the sovereign act of God. It is feared that a conciliar mode of action shares the glory of God with mere mortals.

It is true. This understanding shares the glory of God with mere mortals. But, interestingly, St. Paul says that man is the “image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7). Apparently, we were brought into existence in order to have such a share.

The failure to understand this and the effort to re-invent the Christian story with diminished roles for angels and saints, or Christians themselves, comes very close to setting forth a different gospel altogether.

The Word became flesh of the Virgin Mary. The flesh of the Virgin is also the flesh that is nailed to the Cross (when her soul was itself mysteriously pierced). The flesh which we eat in the Eucharist is also the flesh of the Virgin – for there is no flesh of God that is not the flesh of the Virgin.

And it does no good to protest that the Word merely “took flesh” of the Virgin. For Adam cried out concerning Eve, “This is truly bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” And St. Paul noted concerning the wife of a man that a man should love her, “For no one ever yet hated his own flesh.”

I puzzle at how Christians who understand that it is wrong for a woman to say, “It’s my body and I can do with it what I want,” when she is carrying a child, can at the same time treat the Mother of God as though she had merely lent her womb to God for a period of time.

God’s conciliar action in our salvation is so thoroughly established that it involves our will, our soul, our flesh and bones. He includes bread and wine in our salvation so that the fruit of this garden might become the fruit of life. Everything around you is for your salvation and has its share.

This is not only true in the Incarnation, but continues to be true for every saving effort in our lives. We cannot save ourselves, of course, for that, too, would be denying the conciliar action of God.

There is a saying among the fathers, “If anyone falls, he falls alone, but no one can be saved alone.” But I think we cannot even say that we fall alone – for the one who falls is equally bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Christ does not distance Himself from the one who falls, but unites Himself with him so completely that He endures the consequence of our fall, entering death and hell to bring us back alive.

The Church is nothing other than the conciliar salvation of God, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh – His body. We are being saved together whether we will admit it or not. Those who study and quote the Bible are themselves handling documents that were written, copied and preserved by others. It is a conciliar document.

The Orthodox way of life urges us to embrace the fullness of our conciliar being. In sacraments and saints in worship and wonder we live within the cloud of witnesses and share the common struggle.

For this reason let us unite our song with Gabriel’s,
crying aloud to the Virgin:
“Rejoice, O Lady full of grace, the Lord is with you!
From you is our salvation, Christ our God,
Who, by assuming our nature, has led us back to Himself.
Humbly pray to Him for the salvation of our souls!”

3rd Sunday Of Lent Veneration of the Cross

By Father Sergius Bulgakov; extracted from ‘Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions For the Church Year’

There are two worlds for the Christian and two lives in them: one of these lives belongs to this world of sorrow and suffering, while the other is lived in a hidden manner in the Kingdom of God, in the joyful city of heaven. All of the events, both of the Gospel and of the Church, which are celebrated at different times of the Church Year are not only remembered but are also accomplished in us, insofar as our souls touch this heavenly world. These events become for us a higher reality, a source of unceasing celebration, of perfect joy.

The bliss of divine love is the sacrificial bliss of the Cross, and its power is a sacrificial power. If the world is created by love, it is created by no other power than the power of the Cross. God who is love creates it by taking up the Cross in order to reveal His love for the creature. The Almighty Creator leaves room in the world for the creature’s freedom, thus as it were humbling Himself, limiting His almightiness, emptying Himself for the benefit of the creature.

God seeks in the creature a friend, another self, with whom He can share the bliss of love, to whom He can impart the divine life, and in His boundless love for the creature He does not stop at sacrifice, but sacrifices Himself for the sake of the creature. The boundlessness of the divine sacrifice for the sake of the world and its salvation passes all understanding.

The Son humbles Himself to become man, taking upon Him the form of a servant and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. The Father does not spare His beloved, His only-begotten Son, but gives Him to be crucified; the Holy Spirit accepts descent into the fallen and hardened world and rests upon the Anointed, Christ dwells in His Mother, and sanctifies the Church. It is the sacrifice not of the Son alone, but of the consubstantial and indivisible Trinity as a whole. The Son alone was incarnate and suffered on the Cross, but in Him was manifested the sacrificial love of the Holy Trinity–of the Father who sends Him, and of the Holy Spirit who rests upon Him and upon His sorrowing Mother.

A Christian lives in God, and, in so far as he enters into the love of Christ, shares both in the burden and in the sweetness of His Cross. To worship the Cross and to glory in it is for him not an external commandment, but an inner behest: ‘Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross, and follow Me.’

We can only worship the Cross to the extent to which we share in it. He who is afraid of the Cross and in his inmost heart rejects it worships it falsely and deceives his own conscience.

The original Adam, when he was still in sinless ignorance of good and evil, was given to know the sweetness of the cross through obedience to God’s commandment forbidding him to eat the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grew in Eden (Gen. 2:9). That was the Edenic sign of the tree of the cross: in renouncing his own will, in doing the will of the Heavenly Father, man was crucified on the tree; and it became for him the tree of life, full of eternal bliss. But because of the whispered wiles of the sly and malicious serpent our progenitors rejected the cross; they descended from the cross, which meant that they had become willful and disobedient. And the tree became deadly for them, giving knowledge of good and evil and leading to their expulsion from Eden.

But this tree of the cross from which the original Adam descended, it was this tree of the cross that the New Adam, the Lord, the Son of Man, the Only Begotten Son of God, ascended. He ascended the cross in order to draw all men unto Himself (John 12:32), for there is no path to the Eden of sweetness except the path of the cross. And the ancient serpent, speaking to the Crucified One with the lips of His disciples, tried to tempt Him: Come down from the cross! But the new temptation was rejected, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil once again became the tree of life, a life-bearing garden; and those eating its fruits partake of immortality.

And in every man, for as long as life is given to him, there lives the seed of the old Adam. Every man hears in himself the serpent’s incessant whisper, which is echoed by man’s natural infirmity and weakness: Come down from the cross. Do not suffer. The world is hostile to the cross, is made furious by the word of the cross. Love for the world is hatred for the cross. But love for God is also love for the Lord’s cross.

The cross shines in the sinful darkness of our heart, illumining it and at the same time exposing it. Our sinful, self-loving nature fears it and resists it. Why deceive ourselves? The natural man is afraid of the Cross. And yet we must overcome this fear; we must bring forth the tree of the Cross in our hearts, lift it up, and worship it.

Sweet are Thy wounds in my heart, O sweetest Jesus, and no sweetness is greater for my heart than their sweetness!

Glorifying What Is Not Of This World – The Kingdom Of God Through The Divine Sign Of The Cross In Our Hearts

By Father Sergius Bulgakov ; extracted from the book ‘Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions For the Church Year’

The power of God triumphs by means of itself, not by means of the power of this world. For the world, there is no power of God. The world does not see and does not know the power of God: it laughs at the power of God. But Christians know that the sign of God is powerlessness in the world — the Infant in the manger.

And there is no need to gild the manger, for a gilded manger is no longer Christ’s manger. There is no need for earthly defense, for such defense is superfluous for the Infant Christ. There is no need for earthly magnificence, for it is rejected by the King of Glory, the Infant in the manger.

But there is a need for the authentic revelation of the God of Love. There is a need for the image of all-forgiving meekness, praying for His enemies and tormenters. There is a need for the image of the way of the cross to Christ’s Kingdom, to defeat evil by the triumphant self-evidence of good. There is a need for the image of freedom from the world.

And powerless, we are powerful. In the kingdom of this world we desire to serve the Kingdom of God; we believe in, call, and await this Kingdom. For we have come to know the sign of the Infant in the manger.

Power in powerlessness, Triumph in humiliation. And let our heart be our manger, in which we bear the divine sign, the sign of the cross.

What does the Annunciation teach us about a grateful heart?

This week our Lenten journey is now about to intersect with Friday’s Feast of the Annunciation. I will be posting articles this week about the many and varied lessons the Annunciation holds for us.

Today’s article I find very, very hopeful. Some of you may remember the very well known Thanksgiving homily delivered by Father Alexander Schmemann just a few days before his death in 1983. It was unusual in that he chose to write it down; something that was not at all his usual custom. Perhaps, it was very important for him to express very precisely his thoughts in what became his last homily. Below are the powerful words of this homily. I love to meditate on the first line when I’m feeling particularly discouraged but each line has a fullness and resonance that speaks to me.

Everyone capable of thanksgiving is capable of salvation and eternal joy.
Thank You, O Lord, for having accepted this Eucharist, which we offered to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and which filled our hearts with the joy, peace and righteousness of the Holy Spirit.
Thank You, O Lord, for having revealed Yourself unto us and given us the foretaste of Your Kingdom.
Thank You, O Lord, for having united us to one another in serving You and Your Holy Church.
Thank You, O Lord, for having helped us to overcome all difficulties, tensions, passions, temptations and restored peace, mutual love and joy in sharing the communion of the Holy Spirit.
Thank You, O Lord, for the sufferings You bestowed upon us, for they are purifying us from selfishness and reminding us of the “one thing needed;” Your eternal Kingdom.
Thank You, O Lord, for having given us this country where we are free to worship You.
Thank You, O Lord, for this school, where the name of God is proclaimed.
Thank You, O Lord, for our families: husbands, wives and, especially, children who teach us how to celebrate Your holy Name in joy, movement and holy noise.
Thank You, O Lord, for everyone and everything.
Great are You, O Lord, and marvelous are Your deeds, and no word is sufficient to celebrate Your miracles.
Lord, it is good to be here! Amen!
https://www.oca.org/reflections/fr-alexander-schmemann/thank-you-o-lord

I’m also reminded of the phrase we sing in our first response in the Anaphora. The phrase ‘a sacrifice of praise’ is taken directly from multiple Psalms.

I think ‘sacrifice of praise’ describes beautifully this eucharistic exchange that Father Schmemann describes as what ’we offered to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. And that miraculously, our praise opens our hearts to be filled ‘with the joy, peace and righteousness of the Holy Spirit.’

So, today’s article reminds us of the importance of sacrificing whatever else we may be tempted to be doing right now and praising God. We see the Annunciation as uniting creation and Creator with this same foundation of praise and thanksgiving that Father Schmemann so beautifully described.

My Soul Magnifies the Lord”

By Father Thomas J. Paris

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

I have a secret that I would like to share with you. One might call it “an open” secret, but many people have stumbled because they ignored the truths in this secret. They have led sad, unfulfilled and many times wasted lives because they didn’t implement the wisdom hidden in this secret.

Here’s the secret. Hush; bend your ear close so that you will hear clearly. The secret of a happy, joy-filled life is a grateful heart. Without a heart filled with gratitude there is never a possibility of a life of happiness.

As we celebrate the Annunciation, we remember the earth-shaking news that God is taking on flesh. The Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, is going to enter the world as one of His creatures, to unite Himself with us, so that we can ultimately be united with God the Father.

It is a day that stumps the imagination. How? Why? Could God really do something like this? Could He actually become man and still remain God? What does that do to us? How does it change our future, yours and mine?

“My Soul Magnifies the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” (Luke 1:46,47) is a paean gushing forth from a heart filled to overflowing with gratitude. It is the opening lines of the Magnificat sung by The Panagia, the Mother of God after hearing the following words from her cousin Elizabeth:

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, but why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:42)

The young teenage woman was truly overwhelmed by the message brought to her by the Archangel Gabriel. “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” The Archangel’s reply was both comforting and yet overwhelming. “For, with God nothing will be impossible.”

And Mary’s response was the culmination of humankind’s long effort to accomplish. Mary on behalf of all humans gives the one response that is needed from all of us. Yes Lord, I want to serve you. I do accept your offer of love. Change me so that I can be a clean vessel carrying you within me. Let the miracle of your birth in time transform mortals into timelessness.

Mary’s song of bursting praise is the manifestation of a heart filled with gratitude and thanksgiving. As we learn from the Orthodox Study Bible Mary knew her Scripture. The Bible was her inspiration and guide. “My soul magnifies the Lord” was a hymn first offered by Hannah who in her advanced years uttered this inspired prayer (1 Samuel 2:1-10). It was prayed by expectant Jewish mothers for centuries.

Her words echo thanksgiving and gratitude:

“He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.”

Now this was not the only response that Mary could have given to the announcement from the Archangel and the words of Elizabeth.

She could have said, “Thanks, but no thanks. I really don’t want to be a spectacle carrying a child under these strange circumstances. I don’t need all that pressure on me to try to live up to some high standard that will curtail my activities, restrain my play, exercise program and entertainment. I don’t have time to raise a child. I don’t have the financial means, for I am so over my head in debt already. I didn’t ask for this honor. Give it to someone else. Why is it always me who is given the difficult problems? How come Miss ‘so and so’ gets off so easy and I am the one saddled with a child. I have so much more to experience in life before I need to take on the responsibilities of motherhood? Why poor me! “

Yes Mary could have responded in this or some other negative way, but thankfully she didn’t. She knew intuitively that a life of complaining, dissatisfaction, resentment, jealousy, grumbling and lament never brings happiness. Nor does resignation or indifference.

Happiness comes not when we reluctantly accept a new situation, a burdensome challenge or difficult responsibility, but when we embrace it and thank God for the opportunity to grow. Mary did not simply resign herself to her fate. She saw God acting, God loving, God offering, and she whole-heartedly embraced the new reality and burst into a song of praise and thanksgiving. She found true happiness in a life filled with gratitude.

Mary, the Theotokos, remains a model for all generations. She is the “Canon” the Rule or Measure by which all of us are to gauge our lives. She said Yes to God’s offer of love. She gratefully worshipped and thanked Him. May we be wise enough to do the same.

2nd Sunday of Lent Adult Education Class

This week the Church honors St. Gregory Palamas and his many important contributions to our faith. The theme I’d like us to focus on this week in the context of St. Gregory’s teaching is healing. Here is a quote from him that describes this process:

St. Gregory writes,

This bodily renewal is seen now through faith and hope rather than with our eyes, not being reality yet. The soul’s renewal, on the other hand, begins… with holy baptism through the remission of sins and is nourished and grows through righteousness in faith. The soul is continually renewed in the knowledge of God and the virtues associated with this knowledge, and will reach perfection in the future contemplation of God face to face. Now, however, it sees through a glass darkly.

An important aspect of ‘our part’ in this healing is in the keeping of the Lord’s commandments as we learn to rely and depend upon the gift of the Holy Spirit. St. Gregory continues:

For the Lord has promised to manifest Himself to the man who keeps [His commandments], a manifestation He calls His indwelling and that of the Father, saying, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make our abode wth him, and “I will manifest Myself to him.”

I’d like us to begin class this week with your observations on this second week of Lent. Next, I’d like us to read and reflect on the short homily from Father Phillip LeMaster entitled ’St. Gregory Palamas and the Healing of our Paralysis’. I’d then like us to read a short, very powerful reflection from C.S. Lewis that fits very nicely into this healing current of St. Gregory with an article entitled ‘Finding our True Selves in Christ’. I’d also like us to spend some time on prayer and use Archbishop Kallistos Ware’s very short article ’How Essential Is Prayer’.

I will print out the following articles for our class tomorrow:

Below are the other posts from this week that may also have value and relevance to our class and your Lenten journey:

How essential is prayer?

By Archbishop Kallistos Ware

’Remember God more often than you breath’ says St. Gregory Nazianzus (d.389). Prayer is more essential to us, more an integral part of ourselves, than the rhythm of our breathing or the beating of our heart. Without prayer there is no life. Prayer is our nature. As human persons we are created for prayer just as we are created to speak and to think. The human animal is best defined, not as a logical or tool-making animal or an animal that laughs, but rather as an animal that prays, a eucharistic animal, capable of offering the world back to God in thanksgiving and intercession.
Foreword by Kallistos Ware from the book ’Praying with the Orthodox Tradition’

On the subject of the Paralyzed Man – Homily by St. Gregory Palamas

Taken from The Homilies of St. Gregory Palamas Vol. 2, compiled by Christopher Veniamin. Homily 29 “On the subject of the Paralyzed Man who, according to Matthew the Evangelist, was healed in Capernaum. Also on Godly Sorrow”

The scribes and Pharisees, Greeks and Jews, are doubtful about the power and grace of Holy Baptism in which we believe, and ask, “Who can forgive sins?” (Mark 2:7). But we whose souls and bodies used to be paralyzed through sensual pleasures and passions, and incapable of doing anything good, hear the Lord saying to each of us, as to that paralyzed man, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thy house” (Matt. 9:6). Strengthened by the grace and power of Holy Baptism within us, we become vigorous and active in virtue, and bring into subjection our mental and physical capabilities and those material things which ought to be subservient to them, but which formerly overpowered us. We then go wherever pleases God and ourselves and, as far as we can, move to our real home, the eternal heavenly mansions. Those who see us ordering our lives in this godly way, marvel and glorify God, Who has given such power and authority to those who believe in Him (cf. Matt. 9:8), that they have their citizenship in heaven while still living on earth. But when we sin after being baptized, although the grace and power of Baptism remain because of the Giver’s love for mankind, the soul’s health and purity depart.

That is why we who are sinners need to be sorrowful and downcast again over our former sins, and to prostrate ourselves anew in repentance, that we may hear once more in a mysterious fashion those words to the paralyzed man, “Son, be of good cheer”, receive forgiveness and have joy in exchange for our grief. For this kind of sorrow is that spiritual honey which we suck from the barren rock, according to the Scriptural allusion, “They sucked honey out of the rock” (Deut. 32: 13 LXX). As Paul says, “That Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). Do not be surprised that I refer to sorrow as honey. This is what Paul meant when he said, “Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of (2 Cor. 7: 10). When someone with an injured tongue is offered honey, it seems to sting, but when his wounds are healed he realizes that honey is sweet. Similarly, when the fear of God touches perceptive souls through the preaching of the Gospel, it brings sorrow, as they are still covered in sin’s wounds. But once they have rid themselves of these through repentance, they receive the Gospel’s joy instead. As the Savior says, “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (John 16:20). Which sorrow? The sorrow the Lord’s disciples felt at being deprived of their Master and Teacher; the suffering Peter experienced when he denied Christ; the grief of every godly person who repents of his transgressions and his slothful lack of virtue. On falling into sins we should accuse only ourselves and no one else. When Adam broke the commandment, putting the blame on Eve did not help him, nor was it any use for her to accuse the serpent (Gen. 3:12-13). God put us in charge of ourselves, and our souls have been granted absolute authority over the passions, so nothing can prevail over us and force us.

This, then, is godly sorrow that brings salvation: to blame only ourselves, nobody else, for what we do wrong, to grieve over ourselves, and to be reconciled with God through confession of our sins and painful remorse over them.

St. Gregory Palamas and the Healing of our Paralysis – Second Sunday of Lent

By Father Phillip LeMasters

Think for a moment how you would feel if you went to the doctor with a serious health problem and were simply told medical facts about your condition and that you were an interesting case. You would probably not be happy at all because you go to a physician to be healed, not simply to learn truths that in and of themselves do not restore you to health.

On this second Sunday of Great Lent, we remember a great saint who knew that our salvation is not in mere ideas about God, but in true participation in His life by grace. St. Gregory Palamas lived in the 14^thcentury in the Byzantine Empire. A monastic, a bishop, and a scholar, he defended the experience of hesychast monks who in the stillness of deep prayer beheld the divine light of the uncreated energies of God. In ways that go beyond rational understanding, they saw the divine glory as they participated in the life of God by grace.

Against those rationalists who said that such a thing was impossible, St. Gregory insisted that we know the Lord by being united with Him in prayer and holiness. Jesus Christ has joined humanity and divinity and dwells in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. We truly become partakers of the divine nature when we know by experience the presence of God in our lives.

That is precisely what happened to the paralyzed man in today’s gospel lesson. The Lord did not simply convey ideas to Him, but instead shared His divine energies by restoring him to health, both spiritually and physically. At the root of all human corruption is our sin, which weakens and sickens us all, and the Savior showed His divinity by forgiving the man’s sins. Christ then enabled the man to rise up and walk as evidence that He has the authority to forgive sins as the Son of God.

This healing also shows what it means to be infused with the gracious divine energies, for the paralyzed man experienced freedom from bondage and a miraculous transformation of every dimension of his life. He did not simply hear words or receive a diagnosis, for the Lord healed him inwardly and outwardly.

This miracle speaks to us all, of course, because we are sinners paralyzed by our own actions and those of others. We have made ourselves so sick and weak that we do not have the strength to eradicate the presence of evil in our lives. Just think for a moment of how easily we fall into words, thoughts, and deeds that we know are not holy. Our habitual sins have become second nature to us; left to our own resources we are no more able to make them go away than a paralyzed man is to get up and walk.

The good news is that Jesus Christ comes to every single one of us with forgiveness and healing. Too often, we are willing only to ask for forgiveness, but not to rise, take up our beds, and walk. In other words, we fail to see that being infused with the gracious divine energies is not a matter of simply being excused from paying a penalty or declared not guilty; instead, it is truly a calling to become who we are created to be in God’s image and likeness. It is to be healed from all the ravages of sin and to shine with the light of holiness as we participate by grace in the life of the Holy Trinity.

No, we do not have to become monks and nuns in order to do that. But we do need to do everything that we can to open ourselves to the healing energies of God. When we pray, fast, give to the needy, and practice forgiveness and reconciliation, or any other act of truth faithfulness or repentance, we do so in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, alive and active in us. Even the smallest bits of “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” that we experience are the fruits of the Spirit’s presence. (Gal. 5:22) We should cherish them as such and do what we can to help them grow and become characteristic of our lives and personalities.

The truth is that if we want to know Christ’s healing and strength, we have to obey His commandments, for He calls us all to get up and move forward in a holy life. In order to do that, we have to welcome and cooperate with our Lord’s mercy. Think again of going to the doctor yourself. We’re glad to hear that there’s a cure for our ailments, but that knowledge will do us no good unless we participate in the treatment. We have to take our medicine and do our therapy if we want to benefit personally.

How sad it would have been for the formerly paralyzed man to have disobeyed the Lord’s command and simply stayed in bed. How sad that we so often do precisely that in our refusal to cooperate with Christ’s healing and mercy by obeying Him. As we continue our Lenten journey, let’s remember that in every aspect of the Christian life we experience the gracious divine energies of the Lord. The Son of God has joined Himself to every dimension of our human existence and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts. We do not have mere signs and symbols of salvation, but God Himself. The only limits to His presence, power, and healing in our lives are those that we keep in place. This Lent, let’s leave our sick beds behind and do all that we can to participate more fully in the healing mercy that the Savior brings to each and every one of us. That’s the best way to prepare to behold the glory of His resurrection.